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The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

Posted By: JohnZulzman
The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

The Secret Wife of Louis XIV
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (August 31, 2010) | ISBN: N/A | ASIN: B004HKIMEA | 528 pages | EPUB + MOBI | English | 1.73 Mb

Franзoise d’Aubignй, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden’s seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family’s fortunes, and Franзoise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and ambitious court in all Europe.
At fifteen, she was married off to the forty-two-year-old satirical poet Paul Scarron, a former rouй now grievously deformed by rheumatism—“a sort of human Z,” as he described himself. Despite his ailments, Scarron presided over the liveliest and most scandalous literary salon in Paris, and Franзoise quickly became its most prized ornament.
After Scarron’s death, she enjoyed a merry widowhood in the fashionable Marais district, in the company of the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the King’s splendid mistress, Athйnaпs de Montespan, who made the young widow governess to her brood of illegitimate children. The appointment transformed Franзoise’s life, but was fatal to the temperamental Athйnaпs herself, with the King soon turning his attentions to the graceful governess. Franзoise was raised to the nobility as Madame de Maintenon—and, unofficially, “Madame de Maintenant,” the lady of the moment.The acclaimed biographer Veronica Buckley traces the extraordinary story of Franзoise’s progress from pauper child to salonniиre to the compromised position of Louis’s secret wife and uncrowned Queen. An absolute ruler, Louis turned away his many other mistresses to live with Franзoise only, trusting her as his closest confidante and remaining in love with her for forty years.

Sparkling with the irresistible wit of contemporary chroniclers such as Madame de Maintenon, this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form. In vibrant colors, The Secret Wife of Louis XIV paints a portrait of Europe in an age of violent change, and the Sun King’s France in the process of becoming its modern self.